Stat whore

The term Stat Whore is usually used in a jokey, mildly derrogatory way, as a term for someone who seems overly concerned with their statistics. Some people think it is a particularly negative thing, implying that they care too much about increasing their personal site statistics - perhaps in some cases people take this phrase as an implication that they prefer their level icons over helping others. Examples of this include: Voting on Newgrounds to give the best chance of earning themselves Blam and Protect Points, rather than giving their honest opinion and posting worthless, irritating posts on the BBS to enlarge their post count. Others are quite happy with the term, and may use it refering to themselves. The term is also used more generally in a light-hearted, dismissive sense for people who are concerned with improving their personal statistics in any walk of life, or Newgrounds in particular. A less negative term for someone interested in their statistics might be a Stat Enthusiast.

Contents

The Newgrounds system encourages a user to increase their Voting Power by depositing their experience and achieving Blam and Protect Points along with earning in most cases better looking icons. The Medal system also encourages Stat Whores to play games with medals in order to earn Medal Points. Additionally, it gives more credibility to those with a high Whistle rank. In addition, a high amount of BBS Posts is often used as a mark of seniority on the forum. As well as the official Newgrounds rankings, there exist long-standing lists on the BBS of top users in other statistics namely reviews and review replies, BBS Posts, Blam and Protect Points. These can be collected together using various interactive Flash submissions making a sum known commonly as Total Points.

Highwatermark and Icedragon64 express the idea of the negative aspects of Stat Whores by defining them thus:

"Statistics-whore (st@-tis-tiks-'hor)n. One who cares about his or her Newgrounds Profile more than he or she cares about the grades that he or she is giving"
Then giving the alternative name to the other voters as Honest Voters in NG User Guide, which has info on voting for stats.

2x10k Updates This is a list of everyone known to have at least two stats over 10,000- known as the Pentalist because it includes five stats- Experience, Blams, Protects, Posts and Reviews. The Hexalist updates include individual medals.

Whilst it is true that we don't know why anyone makes the choices they do on NG, you have to suspect that the highest ranked users put getting their experience and their BP points at a high priority. Hundreds of people regularly log into the NG Log to compare their stats with others, even though most NG users are not represented on this log, therefore the rank it shows is not usually complete:

Users such as Pimp, who joined way back in 1999 and has logged an average of over 9.9 experience points per day out of 10, clearly consider getting their points for a day a high priority. There are a number of threads where users talk about the top spot and Pimp has posted in them about getting and keeping the number one position, indeed he Posts about little else. Interestingly, a number of users, such as Wylo, have, through Blam/Protect a more powerful total vote than Pimp.

XwaynecoltX is another apparent example of someone who is very concerned with their Stat position on Newgrounds. In his case, he appears to be concerned with writing the most reviews. However, it is worth noting that his reviews have always been at least adequate, as they have to be to pass the attention of the Review Mods, and he has gradually improved the average quality over time, so they are a usefull guide to anyone who gets one.